


And I am the Moon

by sheridesthelion



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - I don't even know, BAMF!Stiles, Canon Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slow Build, Wolf!Derek, and derek is like frodo, i don't really know how to tag this, stiles is basically the one ring, the betas are the lost boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheridesthelion/pseuds/sheridesthelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When he was little, his mother used to tell him stories. Not the usual fairytales and folk lore about princesses and knights and three bears who sat in chairs that just weren’t comfortable. When he was little, he would climb onto his mother’s lap in front of the fireplace, and she told him ghost stories. </i>
</p><p>  <i>“When the moon is full, Ilkay, thats when the Howlers walked the Earth. With their fangs sharp as razors and their claws as big as your arm. Their terrible eyes glowing icy blue and blazing gold in the darkness."</i></p><p>Years later, on Stiles' seventeenth birthday, he's made an orphan and transported to the land of his childhood fairytales, complete with a grouchy wolf prince, a band of four feral teenagers and a prophecy that makes may or may not mean that Stiles is basically the One Ring to Rule them All.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I am the Moon

  
_Before the world you know was like it is_  
 _I held a lover once and I was his_  
 _And we walked along the river in the sun_  
 _But he's a lonely man, so this was done_  
 _The only place we had to meet was night_  
 _While the sun he sleeps in shadows we can hide  
_ _On the mountainside we spent our time together  
_ _But it is gone when morning comes_

_**Oh Land** _

\---

[ Prologue ]

When he was little, his mother used to tell him stories. Not the usual fairytales and folk lore about princesses and knights and three bears who sat in chairs that just weren’t comfortable. When he was little, he would climb onto his mother’s lap in front of the fireplace, and she told him ghost stories.

_“When the moon is full, Ilkay, thats when the Howlers walked the Earth. With their fangs sharp as razors and their claws as big as your arm. Their terrible eyes glowing icy blue and blazing gold in the darkness._

_“The men of Silver hunted the terrible monsters, cutting them in half with heavy broad swords laced with purple flowers. The Woman was the fiercest of all. She came and tricked the Black Wolf, before burning them all alive, their howls filling the night as their souls left their bodies. They now travel this world, spirits looking for revenge and for their moon. They stop at nothing, Ilkay, slitting the throats of anyone with an ounce of Silver in their veins.”_

_“But Mama,” he’d asked, eyes wide and curious. “What happens to the Black Wolf?”_

_His mother would smile sadly, and the arms around him would tighten protectively. “He walks alone, searching for the moon and his Pack. When he finds his moon, then his soul can be saved along with the souls of his Pack. But the men of Silver won’t let that happen. They want the moon for their own bidding. If they can destroy the moon, they’ll finally be rid of all the Howlers.”_

_“I hope the Howlers never ever come back. They’re scary.”_

There were other stories. A forbidden romance between a Howler and a Silver that ended with the death of a mother. Or the man who was burned inside who ate the innards of innocent people. There was the girl with the shakes, who’s own body was possessed by some metallic sentient, and the Snake that tore through the land paralyzing his victims before killing them. Stories that chilled him to the bone, kept him awake at night watching the shadows. He was too young to hear these things; John Stilinski always said after pacifying one of his son’s night terrors. It wasn’t healthy for him to be so afraid of the moon or the dirt beneath his sneakers.

_“It’s just a rock in the sky, kiddo,” he’d say, closing the curtains in his son’s room. “It’s a hundred million miles away, and there’s nothing and no one on it. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”_

_“But mama said that makes the Howlers come for you!”_

_“There’s no such thing. Do you understand? It’s just make believe.”_

Eventually, as all childhood stories become, the ghost tales simply became a fond memory he had of his younger years. He stopped begging his mother to tell them to him. His father stopped consoling him in the middle of the night. He could see the way his mother looked at him, wanting to tell him the stories again, but his attention would be caught by the flashing images on the television or the neighbor boy coming and dragging him into a water gun fight down the street.

_“Don’t go too close to the forest!” his mother would always warn._

He was never allowed in the forest. Not even with his parents or his class on a field trip. His parents argued over it, till his father finally gave in to his mother’s stubborn position on the manner.

The day his mother died was the day he stopped answering to his name. He had been the one to find her, shot in the chest and bleeding out on the living room floor. Her blood stained the wooden floor boards and his hands as he held her.

_“Don’t let them find you, Ilkay” she told him as he cried for help. “Don’t let them know who you are.”_

  
\---

 

[ Chapter One ]

Stiles woke up on his seventeenth birthday with the feeling of promise in the air. Everything changed when you were seventeen. Right? It was one year away from legal adulthood. He could go see R rated movies without having to worry about one of the old ladies at the ticket booth raising a questioning eyebrow and instead selling him a ticket to Smurfs. Yeah, seventeen was going to be awesome.

Filled with the excitement of aging, the boy fell out of bed with much more enthusiasm than usual, hopping in the shower for a quick wash before throwing on his clothes. There was no ‘special birthday outfit’ like his mom used to pick for him other than whatever was laying on his floor that didn’t smell particularly bad. After grabbing his backpack, he hurried down the stairs, two at a time, and ran into the kitchen.

“Morning Birthday boy,” his dad greeted over his cup of coffee. Stiles beelined for the cabinet, grabbing a box of Poptarts and tearing open a silver packet before getting out his Adderall. 

“Hey Dad! You still want me to swing by the station for dinner?” he asked, hopping easily up onto the counter top, the heels of his feet thudding in rhythm against the cupboard doors. He bit the Poptart in half, hardly chewing before swallowing the pastry.

“I was thinking I’d sneak away if nothing came up,” the Sheriff said, “Maybe try to make your mom’s old spaghetti.”

Stiles grinned in surprised delight, legs kicking in the air harder, the steady thrum of sneakers hitting wood getting louder before he stilled his legs at his dad’s scowl. “That’d be awesome,” the boy agreed as he slid from the counter and stuffed the rest of his first Poptart in his mouth. “I’ll be a bit late though, I wanna go see Mom after practice.”

He stole a sip of his dad’s coffee to take his medication, ‘bleh’ing at the bitter taste, and headed out the door to a shout of “Just be careful, Stiles!” coming from the kitchen. His precious Jeep was parked out front. “It’s gonna be a big year, ol’ Blue. A big big year I tell you,” he spoke to the car as if it were an actual, living person.

One foot in the Jeep, the other still on the ground, Stiles had the strange, sudden and unsettling feeling of being watched. His gut twisted, head snapping up and turning towards the opposite side of the street. Eyes narrowed on a girl, around his age, raven hair falling over her shoulders in loose waves. She was pale, almost glowing, and looked intense, watching him with dark eyes. There was something so familiar about her, yet something so new and foreign. This was a small town. Everyone knew everyone and Stiles was sure he hadn’t seen a moving van anywhere around recently. But what had his eyes bugging, refusing to blink and his heart skipping a beat was the cross bow the girl so casually held at her side. As if it were nothing. As if it were just an extension of her arm.

That had cause for alarm. Stiles turned back toward his house to call for his dad but just as he returned his attention to the other side of the street, the girl was gone and there was no sign of her in any direction. “What the fuck?” He shook his head, blinking rapidly. Maybe he was seeing things. That must have been it. The late nights studying and playing Minecraft were getting to him. He’d go to sleep earlier tomorrow night, after his Birthday had passed.

The drive to school was as uneventful as the rest of the day. Truth be told, Stiles didn’t really have any friends. Not that he’d admit it, or that anyone could say he didn’t try. But when you were the teenage son of the town Sheriff, no one had you at the top of the ‘party invite’ list. Even the nerds thought he was too much of a spaz to hang out with. So Stiles stuck to himself, ate his lunches in the library and got good grades instead of partied hard. He did have one thing going for him in terms of a social life and that was lacrosse. If you counted being the best benchwarmer the school ever had. Practices were typically spent acting as the team tackle dummy with Greenberg.

The sun was setting as practice let out and Stiles got back in his Jeep to drive to the cemetery just outside of town. The moon was full as it crept into the sky, the stars coming out as the street lights of town got further away. The cemetery was small, tucked away on a hillside. It was obvious how little the graveyard was looked after. The gates were black and iron, something you’d see in a Tim Burton movie, with vines growing and twisting all up and around the bars. The tombstones weren’t lined up in any typical fashion, instead they were almost scattered about and dating as far back as the town’s conception nearly a hundred and fifty years prior, the eldest were cracked and covered in moss and over grown flora or dead leaves.

His mother’s grave was in no particular place, but Stiles could always find it by the handless angel statue that loomed over her neighbor’s burial site and the dead oak tree where some disrespectful youths had taken it upon themselves to actually hang a tire swing from it’s largest branch. The tire swing had been there for as long as Stiles could remember, back when his father would take him to the cemetery to visit his grandparents’ graves. 

Sometimes he sat there for hours, swinging and watching the pin wheels on various graves spin. He’d close his eyes and pretend he could hear his mother’s voice. It was the only time he’d ever think back to the stories she used to tell him, how she told them with such passion, like they were more than just fairytales to her. Like they were legends and so, so important. He could hardly remember them now.

His feet dangled, toes brushing the tall grass as he swung. He never spoke when visiting his mom - a rare thing for the boy who’s mouth never stopped running. But there was no need to talk during these moments, so Stiles would focus on the memory of her voice instead, scared that if he talked too much, he’d lose it forever. 

A branch snapped somewhere behind him. He turned his head, firmly planting his feet on the ground when he saw the girl from that morning, standing behind a cluster of tombstones stacked almost one on top of the other. Watching him.

It felt like hours passed, the two just staring at each other. Stiles fidgeted anxiously, waiting for the girl to act, wanting to move himself but not sure what to do. He was hoping the girl was like a t-rex. If he didn’t move... maybe she wouldn’t see him. The only problems were that a) he never could be still, even when he tried really, really hard. And b) the girl had most definitely seen him.

She turned her head as if someone was calling her. Stiles’ gaze followed and caught her breaking into a run out of his peripheral. “H-hey! Hey!” he shouted, getting up at once, but she was disappearing into the trees.  
He didn’t feel safe anymore, not here with that girl somewhere in the surrounding forest. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Stiles hurried back towards his Jeep. He drove back to town a little too fast but no one stopped him on his way home. By the time he pulled into the drive way next to his dad’s cruiser, his nerves had calmed and his stomach was growling for spaghetti.

The front door was wide open, making his stomach twist up and his hands shake again. His dad [i]never[/i] left the front door open. He was the Sheriff, and Stiles watched enough cop shows to know it wasn’t good.

Slowly, and stupidly, he got out of his car, leaving the door open as not to make any sound. The neighbors’ curtains were all drawn, lights off and drive ways absent of any cars. He could hear his heart thundering in his head, his thoughts only on his dad. Was his dad okay? Was his dad inside the house? And what could he, Stiles, do to protect himself if he needed to? There was a baseball bat under his bed and his dad’s gun safe up stairs in his room with a hand gun inside. He could protect himself if he could just get to one of those two things.

He went around the back, where he could possibly climb the tree outside his bedroom and take a flying leap for the window sill. More like a sloth between two branches than a flying squirrel, Stiles managed the feet, pushing open his bedroom window and holding his breath as he climbed inside the dark room. Under the crack in the door, he could see feet shuffling and hear voices speaking in hushed, hurried tones. 

”He’s here.” It was a girl.

”What do you mean, he’s here?” And a man.

“His Jeep is outside, I followed him from the cemetery.”

He. His Jeep.. Stiles’ Jeep. Quickly, Stiles scrambled under his bed, blindly reaching for his old, forgotten baseball bat. His fingers instantly curled around the wrapped wood when they made contact and he dragged it close to his side. He tried not to make any noise, but his head was suddenly thundering and his breathing sounded too heavy through his nose, lungs sucking in as much oxygen as they could as adrenaline hit him. He shoved his hand into his mouth and bit into the fleshy part of his palm to stop himself from making a sound. He bit so hard the metallic warmth of blood was soon finding its way onto his tongue.

”Don’t just stand here,” another man demanded and Stiles heard the cocking of a gun. “Find him and bring him to me.”

“What are you doing?” the girl was asking and Stiles could faintly hear the muffled, undecipherable voice of a third man. 

There was a pause, the second man speaking again. His voice was careful, as if each word held the utmost importance and it made Stiles’ blood run icy cold. “Speeding up the search. Any last words, Sheriff?”

All at once, Stiles felt as though his lungs were collapsing and his head was imploding. “Dad,” he croaked in his hand, looking in horror towards his bedroom door.

His dad’s bellowing voice had him choking on a sob. “Stiles! Run! RUN!” 

A gun shot. 

His bedroom door burst open, light from the hallway flooding the dark room. “Come out, boy,” the second man was calling for him. From under the bed, he saw two pairs of heavy boots falling as they neared his night stand. The man turned towards his closet, pulling open the door unceremoniously. There was a long pause, Stiles and the men all holding their breath in the agonizing silence.

He tried to make himself as small as possible without actually moving, willing his body to shrink, to turn invisible. There were only so many places in his room for a boy to hide. One pair of boots were moving, slowly heel-to-toe and almost inhumanely quiet this time. He watched them circle to the foot of his bed, saw the back of a head, dark curls cascading to the floor to look under his desk and then turn sharply towards him. Stiles locked eyes with the girl, the same girl from that morning, the girl from the cemetery. The girl that watched the second man shoot his father. 

She just stared at him for a moment. Stiles was sure she saw him. They were too close for her not to have seen him. She glanced back towards the man in the room quickly before looking back at him intently, lips moving to mouth one word to him - _run_ \- before she was straightening up.

“Not here,” she said firmly. “He must have gone out the window. He’s probably on foot. We can catch him easy enough. I’ve been watching him all day, he’s not fast.”

“Let’s go then Allison,” the man was ushering her out of the room quickly, but Stiles saw his feet stop in the door way and turn directly towards his bed. Stiles felt his blood run cold, as if the man was staring straight into his soul though he could not see the man and he was certain that he could not be seen from under the bed. “We’ll get him. And when we do, we’ll make sure those beasts never find him.”

He waited for a long time after his bedroom door clicked closed and the footsteps shuffled away before crawling out from under his bed, holding up the bat, ready to strike. When he stepped into the hallway, all thoughts of danger fled and he hurried to his dad’s body, shot through the head, limp on the floor. He wanted to stay, he wanted to hold his dad till help came, but his dad’s words echoed in his head. Run. Those men would be back. If they couldn’t find him, they’d come back and recheck the house. He didn’t know how much time he had till then.  
So he ran.

Down the stairs, into the warm spring night air. He ran. Through the street, past flickering street lamps and parked cars. Past the park and the school. He ran till he reached the edge of the woods, and then he kept on running.

He ran until it hurt. Till his legs were stiff like tin men and the air in his lungs burned. He ran till the thoughts in his head became too much and then he ran till they were erased from his head. Dodging branches and leaves. Stumbling over fallen trees and stones, catching himself and scraping his hands. He ran until he was sure he was dying.

At some point, the air changed. It was no longer warm with spring and the promise of a hot summer, but cold like winter and the leaves under his feet were shining wet with dew.

He collapsed onto his hands and knees, retching miserably. His stomach emptied itself of the Poptarts he had for breakfast and the cold pizza served at lunch. When there was nothing left in his stomach, the dry heaving continued until acid burned his throat and nose. He tried sucking in a breath, but his lungs wouldn’t work. They were too tight, to dried and shriveled. He fell forward and onto his side, just narrowly missing his sick. His chest heaved, heart in his ears as he tried desperately to get air. He was dying. Surely he was dying. But what would be so wrong with that? Death, right now, seemed so peaceful. The image of his dad’s body was impossible to get out of his head, replaced only by his mother’s death. By his mother, weak hands touching his face, the urgency in her voice as she whispered her last words to him. _”Don’t let them know who you are.”_

And with those images playing in his head, the world around him became black.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine. Title from Wolf & I by Oh Land. I've been working on this for a little while now. I hope you guys like it!
> 
> Teen Wolf and all the peeps belong to Jeff Davis obviously. Updates will be posted to my [Tumblr](http://always-fucking-dancing.tumblr.com/)


End file.
